Perhaps the most striking feature of the new
Administration is the role played in it by the Trilateral Commission.
The mass media had little to say about this matter during the
Presidential campaign -- in fact, the connection of the Carter group
to the Commission was recently selected as "the best censored news
story of 1976" -- and it has not received the attention that it might
have since the Administration took office. All of the top positions in
the government -- the office of President, Vice-President, Secretary
of State, Defense and Treasury -- are held by members of the
Trilateral Commission, and the National Security Advisor was its
director. Many lesser officials also came from this group. It is rare
for such an easily identified private group to play such a prominent
role in an American Administration.

The Trilateral Commission was founded at the initiative of David
Rockefeller in 1973. Its members are drawn from the three components
of the world of capitalist democracy: the United States, Western
Europe, and Japan. Among them are the heads of major corporations and
banks, partners in corporate law firms, Senators, Professors of
international affairs -- the familiar mix in extra-governmental
groupings. Along with the 1940s project of the Council on Foreign
Relations (CFR), directed by a committed "trilateralist" and with
numerous links to the Commission, the project constitutes the first
major effort at global planning since the War-Peace Studies program of
the CFR during World War II.

The new "trilateralism" reflects the realization that the
international system now requires "a truly common management," as the
Commission reports indicate. The trilateral powers must order their
internal relations and face both the Russian bloc, now conceded to be
beyond the reach of Grand Area planning, and the Third World.

In this collective management, the United States will continue to
play the decisive role. As Kissinger has explained, other powers have
only "regional interests" while the United States must be "concerned
more with the overall framework of order than with the management of
every regional enterprise." If a popular movement in the Arabian
peninsula is to be crushed, better to dispatch US-supplied Iranian
forces, as in Dhofar. If passage for American nuclear submarines must
be guaranteed in Southeast Asian waters, then the task of crushing the
independence movement in the former Portuguese colony of East Timor
should be entrusted to the Indonesian army rather than an American
expeditionary force. The massacre of over 60,000 people in a single
year will arouse no irrational passions at home and American resources
will not be drained, as in Vietnam. If a Katangese secessionist
movement is to be suppressed in Zaire (a movement that may have
Angolan support in response to the American-backed intervention in
Angola from Zaire, as the former CIA station chief in Angola has
recently revealed in his letter of resignation), then the task should
be assigned to Moroccan satellites forces and to the French, with the
US discreetly in the background. If there is a danger of socialism in
southern Europe, the German proconsulate can exercise its "regional
interests." But the Board of Directors will sit in Washington....

The Trilateral Commission has issued one major book-length report,
namely, The Crisis of Democracy (Michel Crozier, Samuel Huntington,
and Joji Watanuki, 1975). Given the intimate connections between the
Commission and the Carter Administration, the study is worth careful
attention, as an indication of the thinking that may well lie behind
its domestic policies, as well as the policies undertaken in other
industrial democracies in the coming years.

The Commission's report is concerned with the "governability of the
democracies." Its American author, Samuel Huntington, was former
chairman of the Department of Government at Harvard, and a government
adviser. He is well-known for his ideas on how to destroy the rural
revolution in Vietnam. He wrote in Foreign Affairs (1968) that
"In an absent-minded way the United States in Vietnam may well have
stumbled upon the answer to 'wars of national liberation.'" The answer
is "forced-draft urbanization and modernization." Explaining this
concept, he observes that if direct application of military force in
the countryside "takes place on such a massive scale as to produce a
massive migration from countryside to city" then the "Maoist-inspired
rural revolution may be "undercut by the American-sponsored urban
revolution." The Viet Cong, he wrote, is "a powerful force which
cannot be dislodged from its constituency so long as the constituency
continues to exist." Thus "in the immediate future" peace must "be
based on accommodation" particularly since the US is unwilling to
undertake the "expensive, time consuming and frustrating task" of
ensuring that the constituency of the Viet Cong no longer exists (he
was wrong about that, as the Nixon-Kissinger programs of rural
massacre were to show). "Accommodation" as conceived by Huntington is
a process whereby the Viet Cong "degenerate into the protest of a
declining rural minority" while the regime imposed by US force
maintains power. A year later, when it appeared that "urbanization" by
military force was not succeeding and it seemed that the United States
might be compelled to enter into negotiations with the NLF [National
Liberation Front] (which he recognized to be "the most powerful purely
political national organization"), Huntington, in a paper delivered
before the AID-supported Council on Vietnamese Studies which he had
headed, proposed various measures of political trickery and
manipulation that might be used to achieve the domination of the
U.S.-imposed government, though the discussants felt rather
pessimistic about the prospects....

In short, Huntington is well-qualified to discourse on the problems
of democracy.

The report argues that what is needed in the industrial democracies
"is a greater degree of moderation in democracy" to overcome the
"excess of democracy" of the past decade. "The effective operation of
a democratic political system usually requires some measure of apathy
and noninvolvement on the part of some individuals and groups." This
recommendation recalls the analysis of Third World problems put forth
by other political thinkers of the same persuasion, for example,
Ithiel Pool (then chairman of the Department of Political Science at
MIT), who explained some years ago that in Vietnam, the Congo, and the
Dominican Republic, "order depends on somehow compelling newly
mobilized strata to return to a measure of passivity and defeatism...
At least temporarily the maintenance of order requires a lowering of
newly acquired aspirations and levels of political activity." The
Trilateral recommendations for the capitalist democracies are an
application at home of the theories of "order" developed for subject
societies of the Third World.

The problems affect all of the trilateral countries, but most
significantly, the United States. As Huntington points out, "for a
quarter century the United States was the hegemonic power in a system
of world order" -- the Grand Area of the CFR [Council on Foreign
Relations]. "A decline in the governability of democracy at home means
a decline in the influence of democracy abroad." He does not elaborate
on what this "influence" has been in practice, but ample testimony can
be provided by survivors in Asia and Latin America.

As Huntington observes, "Truman had been able to govern the country
with the cooperation of a relatively small number of Wall Street
lawyers and bankers," a rare acknowledgement of the realities of
political power in the United States. But by the mid-1960s this was no
longer possible since "the sources of power in society had diversified
tremendously," the "most notable new source of power" being the media.
In reality, the national media have been properly subservient to the
state propaganda system, a fact on which I have already commented.
Huntington's paranoia about the media is, however, widely shared among
ideologists who fear a deterioration of American global hegemony and
an end to the submissiveness of the domestic population.

A second threat to the governability of democracy is posed by the
"previously passive or unorganized groups in the population," such as
"blacks, Indians, Chicanos, white ethnic groups, students and women --
all of whom became organized and mobilized in new ways to achieve what
they considered to be their appropriate share of the action and of the
rewards." The threat derives from the principle, already noted, that
"some measure of apathy and noninvolvement on the part of some
individuals and groups" is a prerequisite for democracy. Anyone with
the slightest understanding of American society can supply a hidden
premise: the "Wall Street lawyers and bankers" (and their cohorts) do
not intend to exercise "more self-restraint." We may conclude that the
"greater degree of moderation in democracy" will have to be practiced
by the "newly mobilized strata."

Huntington's perception of the "concerned efforts" of these strata
"establish their claims" and the "control over... institutions" that
resulted is no less exaggerated than his fantasies about the media. In
fact, the Wall Street lawyers, bankers, etc., are no less in control
of the government than in the Truman period, as a look at the new
Administration or its predecessors reveals. But one must understand
the curious notion of "democratic participation" that animates the
Trilateral Commission study. Its vision of "democracy" is reminiscent
of the feudal system. On the one hand, we have the King and Princes
(the government). On the other, the commoners. The commoners may
petition and the nobility must respond to maintain order. There must
however be a proper "balance between power and liberty, authority and
democracy, government and society." "Excess swings may produce either
too much government or too little authority." In the 1960s, Huntington
maintains, the balance shifted too far to society and against
government. "Democracy will have a longer life if it has a more
balanced existence," that is, if the peasants cease their clamor. Real
participation of "society" in government is nowhere discussed, nor can
there be any question of democratic control of the basic economic
institutions that determine the character of social life while
dominating the state as well, by virtue of their overwhelming power.
Once again, human rights do not exist in this domain.

The report does briefly discuss "proposals for industrial democracy
modeled on patterns of political democracy," but only to dismiss them.
These ideas are seen as "running against the industrial culture and
the constraints of business organization." Such a device as German
co-determination would "raise impossible problems in many Western
democracies, either because leftist trade unionists would oppose it
and utilize it without becoming any more moderate, or because
employers would manage to defeat its purposes." In fact, steps towards
worker participation in management going well beyond the German system
are being discussed and in part implemented in Western Europe, though
they fall far short of true industrial democracy and self-management
in the sense advocated by the libertarian left. They have evoked much
concern in business circles in Europe and particularly in the United
States, which has so far been isolated from these currents, since
American multinational enterprises will be affected. But these
developments are anathema to the trilateralist study.

Still another threat to democracy in the eyes of the Commission
study is posed by "the intellectuals and related groups who assert
their disgust with the corruption, materialism, and inefficiency of
democracy and with the subservience of democratic government to
'monopoly capitalism'" (the latter phrase is in quotes since it is
regarded as improper to use an accurate descriptive term to refer to
the existing social and economic system; this avoidance of the taboo
term is in conformity with the dictates of the state religion, which
scorns and fears any such sacrilege).

Intellectuals come in two varieties, according to the trilateral
analysis. The "technocratic and policy-oriented intellectuals" are to
be admired for their unquestioning obedience to power and their
services in social management, while the "value-oriented
intellectuals" must be despised and feared for the serious challenge
they pose to democratic government, by "unmasking and
delegitimatization of established institutions."

The authors do not claim that what the value-oriented intellectuals
write and say is false. Such categories as "truth" and "honesty" do
not fall within the province of the apparatchiks. The point is that
their work of "unmasking and delegitimatization" is a threat to
democracy when popular participation in politics is causing "a
breakdown of traditional means of social control." They "challenge the
existing structures of authority" and even the effectiveness of "those
institutions which have played the major role in the indoctrination of
the young." Along with "privatistic youth" who challenge the work
ethic in its traditional form, they endanger democracy, whether or not
their critique is well-founded. No student of modern history will fail
to recognize this voice.

What must be done to counter the media and the intellectuals, who,
by exposing some ugly facts, contribute to the dangerous "shift in the
institutional balance between government and opposition"? How do we
control the "more politically active citizenry" who convert democratic
politics into "more an arena for the assertion of conflicting
interests than a process for the building of common purposes"? How do
we return to the good old days when "Truman, Acheson, Forrestal,
Marshall, Harriman, and Lovett" could unite on a policy of global
intervention and domestic militarism as our "common purpose," with no
interference from the undisciplined rabble?

The crucial task is "to restore the prestige and authority of
central government institutions, and to grapple with the immediate
economic challenges." The demands on government must be reduced and we
must "restore a more equitable relationship between government
authority and popular control." The press must be reined. If the media
do not enforce "standards of professionalism," then "the alternative
could well be regulation by the government" -- a distinction without a
difference, since the policy-oriented and technocratic intellectuals,
the commissars themselves, are the ones who will fix these standards
and determine how well they are respected. Higher education should be
related "to economic and political goals," and if it is offered to the
masses, "a program is then necessary to lower the job expectations of
those who receive a college education." No challenge to capitalist
institutions can be considered, but measures should be taken to
improve working conditions and work organization so that workers will
not resort to "irresponsible blackmailing tactics." In general, the
prerogatives of the nobility must be restored and the peasants reduced
to the apathy that becomes them.

This is the ideology of the liberal wing of the state
capitalist ruling elite, and, it is reasonable to assume, its members
who now staff the national executive in the United States....